Twisted Muses: Hitler’s and Putin’s Pianists

Fifty years ago, a white haired woman stood on a stage in Bad Godesberg, a small town south of Germany’s Cold War capital, Bonn. She stood for twenty minutes as the crowd stomped and applauded her performance of a series of Beethoven pieces on the piano.

The pianist, Elly Ney, was one of Germany’s most talented during the Third Reich. But her political loyalties and actions caused her to be banned from ever playing again in the birth city of her beloved Beethoven, Bonn.Of her exile she said: “I will never go back to Bonn. I prefer to play in a prison since the people there are not so demanding.” As talented as she was, the Bonn city council could not tolerate Elly Ney’s Nazi past – and would not allow her to publicly play any piano within city boundaries.

In the 1930’s Elly Ney was noted among German musicians for her enthusiastic anti-Semitism. She considered, for example, the work of Richard Strauss’s librettist, Stefan Zweig to be “ugly, Jewish-demonic.” Jazz to Elly Ney, was also dangerous due to its racially “impure” qualities.

In 1933, Ney refused to perform in Hamburg after she was asked to replace a Jewish pianist, Rudolf Serkin. For her, replacing a Jew was unbearable.

A devout member of the Nazi party, the pianist supported Hitler’s efforts to remove Jews from important posts including the cultural sector and was pleased when Jewish musicians were no longer allowed to perform in Hitler’s Germany.

Elly Ney Playing Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata Movement 3

After the war, Elly Ney was banned from playing in Bonn and an appeal to that ban was rejected in 1952: she was condemned by the Bonn city council as a “pronounced National Socialist.” The formerly Nazi town of Tutzing, in southern Bavaria, briefly embraced her as an honorary citizen in 1952. But her Nazism was too embarrassing and they stripped her of that status after her death 1968.

Despite the anti-Semitic zeal during the Third Reich, the people of Bad Godesberg still showered Elly Ney with rapturous affection in April 1965. It was no matter for them that she was a prominent member of the Nazi who actively supported the elimination of an entire race: her piano would still play on for them in Bad Godesberg.

Valentina Lisitsa making her case on RT

Decades later and thousands of kilometres away, a Russian pianist who supports Vladimir Putin’s neo-fascist regime has come under similar scrutiny in Canada. In Toronto, the piano of an enthusiastic supporter of the Kremlin repression will not play on. The musician, Valentina Lisitsa, was told that she would not play her concert at the TSO this week due to the extremist views she expressed on social media about Ukraine and Ukrainians.

While the two cases are not the same (Ney played Beethoven while Lisitsa plays Rachmaninoff) the question of an artist’s “freedom of speech”is common to both. Ney expressed her anti-semitism and hate for other races publicly during the Third Reich and Lisitsa expresses her hate for Ukrainians via modern public mediums. Where Ney was an active volunteer in the Nazi party, Lisitsa actively supports pro-Putin extremists with the translation of anti-Ukranian propaganda.

Where Elly Ney used political channels and the print media to express her views, Valentina Lisitsa uses Twitter and Kremlin sponsored political channels in Eastern Ukraine to express hers and her compatriots.

Valentina Lisitsa’s comments may not be specifically anti-Semitic (she does label Jewish supporters of the Maidan protests as “Bandera’s Kikes”) but her suggestion that Russia should apply “some folk medicine that worked very well last time around” is threatening to the millions of Ukrainians whose families suffered during Stalin’s genocide and the misery of the World War Two. Her Twitter posting of a photo of African tribesman beside ethnic Ukrainians in folk costume, may even have amused Ney given the Nazi view of both.

Yet the question of freedom of expression remains. Would those same people who support Valentina Lisitsa’s right to free expression also have supported Elly Ney’s right to the same?

Is it acceptable for us to tolerate an artist who superimposes the faces of her adversaries on pig testicles and encourages her supporters to attack the symphony members who cancelled her performance – as reported by the Globe and Mail? Is there a threshold to our tolerance when we allow such vicious forms of expression to be sheltered behind the justification of artistic merit?

Thankfully, unlike he people of Bad Godesberg who overlooked the extremist past of Hitler’s pianist, Elly Ney fifty years ago, the TSO and Toronto have clearly expressed themselves by not tolerating the extremism of Putin’s pianist, Valentina Lisitsa.

Valentina Lisitsa Playing Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata Movement 3

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An international award winning documentary filmmaker, communications and brand strategist, journalist and political activist, Marcus' work has appeared internationally in print, television, theatres and on the internet. His films “GULAG 113” and “Sinking The Gustloff” have been screened and broadcast in North America and Europe (in Canada they have been seen by nearly 3 million viewers). Marcus' firm, Liefa Communications is responsible for the development and design of many internationally acclaimed websites.
Marcus founded and published his first North American newspaper (The Northern European circ. 50k) in 2000 and has since become expert on regional European and Russian issues with a focus on communications and media strategies as tools of foreign policy and defence on the state level as well as with NGO’s and other organizations. His commentary pieces have appeared in the international media including Canada's Globe and Mail.

15 Comments

Lisitsa is a Ukrainian and proclaims it herself. Ney would never call herself a Jew.

Lisitsa has never tried to stop somebody else from performing, as Ney did.

And the parallel between Putin and Hitler is both ridiculous and offensive.

Entirely apart from his murder of nearly all of continental Europe’s Jews Hitler killed millions more in a horrific war — all in a span of about 12 years (1933 to 1945). In Putin’s 13 years in power he has allowed the Crimea to rejoin Russia — peacefully.

And i think if you’re looking for egregious conduct the invasion and destruction of countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya is a lot worse than Putin’s tepid support for the folks in Donetsk and Lugansk who just want their freedom.

Dan, Lisitsa considers herself to be a Russian born in Ukraine. She calls any Jewish supporters of Ukraine “Bandera’s Kaiks” and she called on her supporters to physically attack anyone going to the TSO according to the Globe And Mail. I would say that there are some very accurate parallels in the piece!

How is that Putin only peacefully annexed Crimea, which planet are you? There were casualties in Crimea. What about 6000 dead in East Ukraine with Russian proven direct involvement in the war, what about hundreds thousand dead in Chechnya, what about Georgia invasion by Russia and other killings including political execution in Russia.

Putin is definitely taking Hilter’s route. If the west allows, the atrocities will only expand.

Also so what Kolomoiski (the guy in a t-shirt with torah) is a Jew. Is this some kind of excuse to rob his country for years? That’s what he’s been doing being an oligarch in a very corrupt country.
After the maidan he sponsored military brigades, he offered $10K for a killed “separatist”. He publicly laughed at a Ukrainian law where you can only have one citizenship – saying that the law prohibits two citizenship but he has three.

Kolga, you either don’t know Russian or you are spreading deliberate lies. The translation of “Zhidobanderovets” on Kolomoysky’s shirt is “Bandera Kike “. Lisitsa isn’t labelling Kolomoysky, she just translates what Kolomoysky calls himself. Her message is that many Ukrainians express themselves in a way which would be unacceptable in the West.

Actually, the shirt says Bandera’s Jew. Certainly not Kike – which is a racist and offensive term in most of the civilized world. That racist term has been intentionally mistranslated by the looks of it.

Nice attempt there to save Kolga but you are completely wrong. No one except anti-Semites and criminals like Kolomoysky use the word жид in Russian to describe a Jewish person. The correct word for Jew in Russian is еврей.

Lisitsa’s point is that nationalists in Ukraine uses a coarse language which would be unacceptable in the West. She is 100% right and Kolga is lying.

Modern Canada and the UK have offered Referendums as a tool to decide issues for areas seeking independence. This seems like a sane method of dispute settlement. Eastern Ukraine has deep historical ties with Russia and is sensitive to the corruption often found in Kiev governments.
The comparison with the Nazi era pianist seems out of place.

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